Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Decapitated - Organic Hallucinosis


After touring the world constantly throughout 2004, Decapitated needed to go back home to Poland and start writing new material. By this time, Decapitated was becoming one of the biggest European death metal acts of the 21st century. Every album that they had released had gotten rave reviews by the critics and the fans, all of the albums being considered instant classics. Ever since their original vocalist was given the pink slip, the rest of the band quit hard drugs all together and decided to go completely herbal to prevent further conflict and confusion. At this point in their career, the band had been pretty dependable with their releases; releasing a new album during the late winter months every other year.

There is quite an increase in the amount of blast beats being used. And when that is mixed with the clangy-sounding guitar distortion, it actually has a somewhat unattractive mushy sound that can take some getting used to in order for you to truly appreciate the sound of the music. One of the best examples of this sound would be A Poem about an Old Prison Man. Because of that mushy sound and the lack of palm-muting on the guitars kind of makes the notes that the musicians are playing somewhat difficult to follow. But after a while of listening to the album a couple of times, you start to hear that the band is very tight and extremely focused. Organic Hallucinosis shows that the members of Decapitated know and have the ability to control their instruments.

The vocalist that is on this album (and this album only) has a really unique that fits the rest of the music surprisingly well. Even though I don’t like this guy as much as Pig, I still enjoy his growls and would definitely listen to the next band he does vocals for. His vocals have a thrash metal sound; they sound more like a really dirty yell than a growl. He sounds like the vocalists for Vader, post-1997 Sepultura, and DevilDriver. But he was unfortunately unable to continue on with the band after the big car crash in 2007 because of how slow his recovery was going. 

I also would like to point out that this is pretty much the end of the band’s Meshuggah phase; so the music on this album is 92% Decapitated. The easiest (and sometimes the best) way to get through a “writer’s block” is to take sounds from other bands, build a basic foundation out of that, and then build up from there; it’s easier to build a song off of a foundation than to start completely from scratch. But it’s always possible to have too much of another band’s sound in your music. But I’m not going to ramble on about that, if you want to see what I have to say about that, read my review of Decapitated’s Nihility album.

I will admit that I feel the guitars are a bit overpowering and make it hard to hear the bassist; but it’s not to the extreme point to where it really bothers me. You can also tell that the band spent quite a bit of time on the production of this album because there are a lot of special effects being done on the instruments and vocals; therefore showing signs of curiosity and experimentation, which is just what I like to see.

As far as the overall sound of the album goes, this is their craziest and most chaotic album. The uncontrolled drumming never stops; keeping the music going at an aggressive pace. The lead guitarist’s solos are backed up with blast beat drumming and fast constant chord changes being done by the rhythm guitarist and the bassist. The bassist has his guitar tuned down very low, but has the treble turned up so that you can hear the sound of the metal strings being picked and hitting the frets. There is an increased use of breakdowns at the end of songs like in Post(?) Organic and Visual Delusion. This album is amazing and only gets better after this making me score this album 17/20. 

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